Global Warming: What is More Likely?

Seen & Heard on the Web: Why the divergent views on global warming?

The debate on global warming and climate change has been raging for decades. Thousands of scientists worldwide have come down on the side of human-caused climate change, while a few have denied it. The small number that oppose the prevailing view all seem to work for oil companies. Hmm.

The Union of Concerned Scientists put together a report a few years ago that offered “the most comprehensive documentation to date of how ExxonMobil has adopted the tobacco industry’s disinformation tactics, as well as some of the same organizations and personnel, to cloud the scientific understanding of climate change and delay action on the issue. According to the report, ExxonMobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.”

ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer. A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.

Global warming remains an issue of widespread political debate, sometimes split along party political lines, especially in the United States. Many of the largely settled scientific issues, such as the human responsibility for global warming, remain the subject of politically motivated attempts to downplay, dismiss or deny them – a phenomenon widely known as climate change denial. The sources of funding for those involved with climate science – both supporting and opposing mainstream scientific positions – have been questioned by both sides. There are debates about the best policy responses to the science, their cost-effectiveness and their urgency. Climate scientists, especially in the US, have reported official and oil-industry pressure to censor or suppress their work and hide scientific data, with directives not to discuss the subject in public communications. Legal cases regarding global warming, its effects, and measures to reduce it, have reached American courts. The energy lobby, oil industry advocates and free marketthink tanks have often been accused of overtly or covertly supporting efforts to undermine or discredit the scientific consensus on global warming.

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